WE SPOTLIGHT THREE OF HUI DESIGN’S ICONIC SPACES:

Merci Marcel Orchard

This is the third and flagship Merci Marcel restaurant that Hui has designed for the clients Marie-Charlotte Ley and Antoine Rouland. Housed in high-end retail mall

Palais Renaissance, it also comprises a multi-brand retail boutique. Taking advantage of the ten-meter-long Orchard street-side elevation, Hui replaced some external walls with sweeping arches that pay homage to an architectural style popular with 1950s houses in Singapore. Rattan accents, rough plaster and exposed painted brick walls, mid-century modern and vintage furniture, and French artist Tiphaine Sartini's large palm murals channel ‘France in the tropics'.

Jigger and Pony

Opened in 2012 in an Amoy Street shophouse, Jigger & Pony has become an institution. It recently garnered the top place in the 2020 Asia's 50 Best Bars award and No. 29 on the World's 50 Best Bars list in 2019. In 2018, it shifted into Amara Hotel. Hui created a more matured yet intimate feel for the larger space, whose interior design evokes the glamor of London's best hotel bars with a glossy blue ceiling, plush velvet seating, circular booths, timber surfaces, and saturated graphic nuances.

Over Easy

Opened by The Lo & Behold Group in

2009, this American diner-style bistro is refurnished in 2018 and pays homage to the 1960s and 1970s-era comfort food institution minus tackiness. Influenced by Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction diner scenes, Hui inserted recognizable elements

– curved mirrors, red butcher's wall, cozy booth seats, and retro movie-signboard counter displays with tongue-in-cheek statements – in a contemporary fashion. Pastel blue and timber elements temper the bold chequered cherry-and-white flooring to create a playful but sophisticated atmosphere.